Bertus van Ellinkhuizen
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Bertus Johan van Ellinkhuizen was born on 14th February 1939 in Batavia (old name of Jakarta ), Indonesia by Johannes Engelbertus and Johanna Virginia Clementine Fransz. His mother belonged to a wealthy family of ship owners. His early childhood was marked by World War II and by the deportation of his father in Japanese concentration camps .
​He arrived in Netherlands at an early age, with his parents and his older brother Walter.
On 1955, Bertus enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague , where he graduated on 1959. After graduation, he moved to Switzerland, Engadine, where he opened his first atelier and he perfected in the study of graphic.
He is considered one of the most authoritative exponents of the woodcut into the contemporary world. He also expressed in oil painting, revisiting in Europe his earliest memories of the East.
On 22th October 1966 he married in La Spezia the Italian soprano Gabriella Rossi Remedi, with whom he had two children: Chiara and Igor. On 1966, He moved his atelier to Italy. His honeymoon in Florence was interrupted by the flood of 1966. On 1967, for the birth of his first daughter, he made the work title " Chiara" .
On 1967 he exhibited in Milan in a solo at "Pino's wall ", a famous meeting place for Milanese artists at that time.
On 1970 , he won the gold medal at the II International Biennial of Graphic Arts in Florence. The critic Renzo Modesti included Bertus van Ellinkhuizen among young artists selected by Patrick Waldberg for a traveling group show in Italy entitled "Surrealism still and forever" .
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Biography
 Bertus al torchio - La Spezia, 1966 |  Bertus con la Fifi - La Spezia.jpg |  Bertus - Galleria Il Sagittario - Udine 1969.jpg |
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 Bertus nello Studio - La Spezia.jpg |  Bertus childBertus child during a party with his sister in law on his right and his elder brother Walter on his left |  Gabry, Bertus' wife |
 Bertus al lavoro.jpg |  Bertus nello studio con il rame originale di una punta secca.jpg |  Bertus nello studio con i legni originali delle xilografie.jpg |
Bertus nello Studio - La Spezia.jpg | Bertus nello Studio - La Spezia.jpg |
Meanwhile, he moved to Cervignano del Friuli from La Spezia, the site of his first Italian atelier. In Cervignano lives also his friend, the painter Giuseppe Zigaina, the cousin of Pier Paolo Pasolini. In those years Bertus was also attending the Venetian artistic world, who gathered around the mythical figure of Peggy Guggenheim. In the Venetian environments, he acquired the nickname " The Indonesian " because of his birth .
In the eighties , after the death of Peggy, Bertus had an abrupt change and began to devote himself obsessively to frescoes, considered by the painter as the only immortal works , able to survive the artist. Its frescoes are ' everywhere in Friuli. Some examples are the frescoes preserved in the City Hall of Cervignano del Friuli . Bertus also made some tiles in Aquileia . The extraordinary elegance of his line, highlights him especially as an engraver of poetic and transfigured aquatic worlds. He died in Palmanova on 24th March 2011.